It operates a variety of colors and speeds, responding to music or a programmed setting. The light is decorative, enough to gently illuminate a dark room, but not as bright as an overhead fluorescent.

In other words, it's kind of a 21st century lava lamp.

The team has already created several prototypes and is launching a Kickstarter page on April 1 to raise funds for the project and to ship the first models to customers. Their goal is to raise $20,000 to produce and ship the first batch of lamps.

They'll start by selling them at $199, with a limited supply of early customers getting a $149 price.

"The main concern is going to be trying to scale up manufacturing and driving the cost down," said Lindeman.

He added that they would like to offer a $99 price eventually.

The team had a local machine shop help make some parts. The device is just under a foot tall and about 4 inches in diameter.

"It was just a lot of trial and error and trying new things," said Lindeman.